“I know that it’s not going to be exactly the same as when I was young and vibrant and new,” he said at a fundraiser last year. “And there was — posters everywhere, hope. The logo was really fresh. And let’s face it, it was cool to support me back then. At cocktail parties, you could sort of say, ‘Yeah, this Obama guy, you haven’t heard of him? Let me tell you about him.’”

*This post has been updated with information that the balls were supplied by the NBA/WNBA players at the event.

Ohhh…..I’m guessing someone from the WH press office contacted Tapper, and asked him to update his post with that information so Obama wouldn’t look like such a narcissistic putz. Well. Sorry. He still looks like a narcissistic putz. He didn’t have to use the Obama basketballs. He could have said, nope – this crap ends right now – today. No more of this creepy cult of personality iconography is going to be tolerated from this day forward. No thank you to Obama images on flags, basketballs, clocks, Chia heads, flip flops, soda, soap on a rope, perfume, jack-in-the boxes or anything else – this is the United States, damn it – not North Korea.

But no….it’s all tolerated and even encouraged. Obama can’t help it if he’s so popular and cool that people keep wanting to have his image and iconography adorning every-day objects…like even spatulas – sold on his own campaign website.

Like this:

Obama flags are nothing new. They have been flying here and there for three and a half years in clear violation of the flag code, and the Obama administration has done absolutely nothing to discourage it. I suspect Obama kinda digs it.

Some vets in Lake County, FL, however, were incensed when they saw a flag with Obama’s mug flying outside the Democrat party headquarters.

And in the case of the bald eagles, it’s a shooting war! You can shoot bald eagles and now Obama’s face is on an American flag at Democrat Party headquarters in Lake County, Florida.

You can shoot bald eagles and now Obama’s face is on an American flag at Democrat Party headquarters in Lake County, Florida. Now, it should be noted, the Obama flag was being flown there for several months before anybody complained about it. I mean, for crying out loud, you would think that a Cuban flag or a picture of Che Guevara would be enough for ’em. But no! They had to go further. They had to put Obama’s picture on the American flag.

They’ve been doing it for years, Rush…

He went on to explain what he thinks is going on:

What Obama wants is to establish separate laws, depending on which tribe or which race you belong to. And the Constitution doesn’t do that, and the Declaration of Independence doesn’t do that. This is all part of Obama’s disdain for the Constitution. Obama, ladies and gentlemen, looks at the Constitution as “rich white man’s law.” The Founders, in his view, were rich white guys. And the Constitution to him and others like him is what they call a “charter of negative liberties.” And what that means to them is the Constitution tells government what it cannot do and how it cannot infringe on our natural, God-given rights which result from our birth and creation. Well, Obama wants a constitution that specifically spells out what the government can do.

Obama wants a constitution where the government is supreme and paramount, not the individual. And so he wants to establish separate laws, depending on which tribe or which race you happen to belong to. The Constitution is a rich white man’s law. This is all part of it. It’s the core philosophy of “Critical Race Theory,” which is the subject that the Breitbart people are examining with their videos of Derrick Bell from Harvard who Obama supported, and Soledad O’Brien…

And another brilliant point made by el Rushbo:

A little aside to those of you who are Catholics. The Northern Arapahoe tribe files a federal lawsuit, a religious aspect that they can kill the bald eagle, and the Obama administration: Oh, your religion says that you need to kill the eagle? Here’s your permit. Indians’ religion is respected to kill the bald eagle, but not the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church, freedom of religion is under assault. The Northern Arapahoe Indian tribe, Native Americans, blank check. You need to kill the bald eagle, here’s the permit.

Although grossing people out seems like an odd way to attract business, it would appear that no laws have been broken.

But the White House has weighed in with this terse statement:

“The White House has a long-standing policy disapproving of the use of the president’s name and likeness for commercial purposes,” deputy press secretary Eric Schultz said in a statement. Schultz, according to Politico, declined to say if the White House would take action.

Really?

By longstanding policy, does he mean, since the time Benetton used the President’s likeness to make Pharaoh Obama look ridiculous?

If someone can point to me instances where this “long-standing policy disapproving of the use of the president’s name and likeness for commercial purposes” has ever manifested itself, before now, I’d much appreciate it.

Because Nice Deb remembers well how throughout the years of 2008 and 2009, the President’s likeness was used on a whole array of commercial products – to the point where it was frankly creepyand obscene, and I don’t remember the President saying boo about it.

I remember it well because I started a category, Obama Cult Products, back in 2008, and I tracked each and every bizarreand disturbingnew item that would appear on the market. I found the cult of personality nature of these products unseemly and kept wondering when the candidate and then the President would finally say, “enough!”

The United States Flag Code provision 176 (g): “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

At some point, wouldn’t you expect the President of the United States step up and say that this gross breech of flag etiquette in his honor should stop? He may not be able to stop entrepreneurs from making a buck off of his image, but he can certainly discourage the practice. He loves to give speeches, doesn’t he? And hasn’t he been dubbed the “Omnipresent President” because of his tendency to involve himself in every day minutia? How hard would it be for Obama to get one of his media toadies to ask him about this, so he can take the opportunity to express his distaste for these flag desecrations?

7. Stop already with all forms of ‘cult of personality’ behavior. I am a public servant, just like all those who have served before and all who will come after my term is complete. It’s not about me, it’s about the country.

Perhaps he could surprise us all, and say something like that?

To the best of my recollection – it never happened. So I’m calling BS on Eric Schultz, who – after all – hasn’t been with the White House all that long. He was hired in May of this year to do damage control handle press matters related to the U.S. Department of Justice and investigations held by the House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA).

Like this:

President Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign today started selling “Made in the USA” t-shirts featuring images of both President Obama and the long-form birth certificate he released copies of last month.

“Wear your support for this campaign with an official Made in the USA T-shirt,” his website advertises. Donate $25 or more today and we’ll send you your limited-edition shirt.

Okay, so the Obama camp must think the birth certificate issue helps them. I’m not sure why after the deplorable way Obama handled the whole deal.

After purposefully blocking examination of the document for two and a half years, Obama expects unanimous praise for finally producing it? Really?

Well guess what. More than a few of us think there’s something profoundly weird about the way Obama handled the issue right from the beginning, when he posted a copy of his COLB on The Daily Kos, for cripes sake.

One wonders what reporters such as Tapper would have thought if a notable Republican had done this. Wouldn’t they have found it uncommon strange that the Republican candidate was retaining lawyers and amassing affidavits rather than producing what turned out to be an easily producible document? Would they have aimed their poison pens at the people asking the questions rather than the candidate who was shiftily taking steps to avoid producing something so readily available?

As Andrew McCarthy opined after Obama finally produced the birth certificate:

… let’s not ignore that Obama did move heaven and earth. This is not just a matter of him thumbing his nose at a fringe collection of nutty “birthers.” There have been several court cases. It is flat out bizarre that one should have to be sued to compel conformance with a routine that millions of Americans comply with every day. Many of these court cases, if not all, could have been short-circuited (indeed, many of the later ones would not have been filed at all) if Obama had just produced the birth certificate. Instead, he not only refused to produce it; he and his campaign paid thousands of dollars in legal fees (in some places it is reported to be well over a million dollars) to fight the lawsuits — and Obama’s lawyers even threatened to seek disciplinary sanctions against lawyers for daring to file the lawsuits. Since Obama has been president, moreover, not just the time of courts and private lawyers has been tied up; government lawyers have had to spend their time — on the public’s dime — on this nonsense.

But we’re supposed to forget all that. “Born in the USA!” “Fight the smears!”

McCarthy writes that the only thing about the whole stinking matter that’s clear, is that Obama knows that the MSM is in his hip pocket.

That is, he knew that he would not be held to the same standard as other politicians, and that if he acted in an unreasonable manner by withholding basic, easily available information that any other person seeking the presidency would be expected — be compelled — to produce, the media would portray as weirdos those demanding the information, not Obama and his stonewalling accomplices. And he also knows that, having now finally produced the document only because the game was starting to hurt him politically, the media will not focus on how easy it would have been to produce the birth certificate three years ago, or on how much time and money has been wasted by his gamesmanship; they’ll instead portray him as beleaguered and the people who have been seeking the basic information (i.e., doing the media’s job) as discredited whackos.

…Which brings us back to Tapper:

“Remember ‘fight the smears’ from the 2008 campaign?” asked campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt. “This is the mobile version of it.”

“Fight the Smears” was an Obama campaign website from 2008 that attempted to refute untruths about the campaign, such as the claim that then-Sen. Obama was a Muslim.

That Fight the Smears post that Tapper linked to purports that Obama never practiced Islam:

“Barack Obama has never been Muslim and never practiced Islam. But rumors about his religion intended to frighten some voters persist, and they mostly return to one point of fact: his name. “Barack” is the candidate’s Kenyan father’s name; Obama’s middle name, “Hussein,” is his grandfather’s name. Obama has described his father as atheist or agnostic. His Kansan mom, whose grandparents were devout Protestants, lived a secular life. Obama’s only personal contact with Islam came as a boy when he moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, with a stepfather who mixed his Islam with Hindu and Animist traditions. In five years there, Obama attended a Roman Catholic school, then a public elementary school, where he sat through a class each week of religious studies. As an adult, Obama turned to Christianity in the late ’80s in Chicago, at Trinity United Church of Christ, where he was baptized, married‹and baptized his kids. As a new U.S. senator, Obama took his oath on the family Bible.”

In any event, the records of the Catholic school and the public school Obama attended during his last year in Indonesia identify him as a Muslim. As Obama relates in Dreams from My Father, he took Koran classes. As Obama doesn’t relate in Dreams from My Father, children in Indonesia attended religious instruction in accordance with their family’s chosen faith. Moreover, acquaintances recall that young Barry occasionally attended Friday prayers at the local mosque, and Maya Soetoro-Ng, Obama’s half-sister (born after Lolo and Ann moved the family to Jakarta), told the New York Times in a 2008 interview, “My whole family was Muslim, and most of the people I knew were Muslim.” In fact, back in March 2007 — i.e., during the early “Islamic ties are good” phase of Obama’s campaign — the candidate wistfully shared with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof his memories of the muezzin’s Arabic call to prayer: “one of the prettiest sounds on earth at sunset.” Kristof marveled at the “first-rate accent” with which Obama was able to repeat its opening lines.

You want to revisit all this crap? Let’s do it. Not that it matters, but why lie about it? And why enable the lies?

The Obama Camp is up to its old dishonest tricks. Not that they have ever been anything but dishonest.

I just came up with my own tee-shirt idea…who would buy one of these babies?

FRONT:

BACK:

Let me know what you think.

I’d sell it for less than the Obama campaign is asking for their dorkwad shirts, too.

UPDATE:

Jack Cashill at The American Thinker calls the pathetic cabal of lickspittles who cover American politics in the MSM these days, “anti-journalists”, in a recent piece at the American Thinker.

Unlike every other candidate in modern presidential history, Obama did not choose to share any of his essential documents, and the media happily obliged him. As Corsi details, Obama has shielded those records involved with his adoption, his kindergarten, Punahou School, Occidental College, his passport and travel, Columbia University (including his senior thesis), Harvard Law School, his medical history, his Chicago law practice, his State Senate career, as well as his SAT and LSAT scores, and, until recently, his very birth certificate.
Then, too, there is the question of Obama’s Connecticut-based Social Security number, a question that Corsi tackles, but the media inevitably dodge.

You know what’s strange? Jerome Corsi was once widely admired by Republicans for co- writing the Swift-boat tell-all that torpedoed John Kerry’s presidential campaign. He wrote the truth about Kerry’s record in Vietnam, and it was ugly. We dug him for that.

Now, Corsi is persona non grata in polite circles… nobody wants to pay attention to his years of research into Obama’s origins because suddenly it’s become uncool to do so. Because the anti-journalists, or ” journolisters” tell us so.

We know these people run cover for Obama…we know they lie….we know they would be in constant attack mode if a Republican had half of the background questions Obama has. Yet, we back off like wussies.

Like this:

The United States Flag Code provision 176 (g): “The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature.

At some point, wouldn’t you expect the President of the United States step up and say that this gross breech of flag etiquette in his honor should stop? He may not be able to stop entrepreneurs from making a buck off of his image, but he can certainly discourage the practice. He loves to give speeches, doesn’t he? And hasn’t he been dubbed the “Omnipresent President” because of his tendency to involve himself in every day minutia? How hard would it be for Obama to get one of his media toadies to ask him about this, so he can take the opportunity to express his distaste for these flag desecrations?

7. Stop already with all forms of ‘cult of personality’ behavior. I am a public servant, just like all those who have served before and all who will come after my term is complete. It’s not about me, it’s about the country.